


Get Your Courage Up

by becketz



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-05 21:17:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5390762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/becketz/pseuds/becketz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roxy loves Eggsy but what she loves less is listening to him pine over Harry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Get Your Courage Up

Roxy loves Eggsy with the sort of uncomplicated, pure love she thinks she would have felt if she had ever had a sibling. He’s her rock and the person she calls at 4:00am. However, if he does not shut up in the next five minutes she is going to murder him. Probably slowly and painfully and with the stiletto of her frankly gorgeous and equally terrifying heels. Realistically, she knows Merlin will probably help her dispose of the body with only a few disappointed looks thrown her way. Roxy knows this, because just last night Merlin had told Eggsy: “If you do not shut up, I will let Roxy murder you with that corkscrew and I will help her dispose your sorry carcass with none the wiser.”

Eggsy had paused, considered this statement, and had been quiet for a good eight minutes as Roxy and Merlin had continued their debriefing on Lancelot and Galahad’s latest mission to infiltrate a high end members only club that was suspected of human trafficking on the side. Then, as if he couldn’t contain himself, Eggsy had burst out, “But did Harry really seduce a mark on a honeypot by posing as a guitarist in a rock band?” and Merlin had shared a disbelieving look with Roxy.

Now, a full day later and sitting with Eggsy on the train from the manor back to the tailor shop, he’s still blathering on about Harry and that damn honeypot mission. Roxy has realistic ideas about her job profession. She’s an international spy operating at the highest level of discretion and no job is too small or too strange in order to keep the world’s peace. She had accepted being nominated by Percival for the position of Lancelot with these perimeters in mind. She had been prepared to be discriminated against for her sex, to sleep with old disgusting men for information, and to be challenged in ways she could have never even have _imagined_ before Alastair, her godfather, had approached her at the family stables with a grim look and mechanically swinging an umbrella, with the words “I know you’re bored living on your parents estate and that you have no wish to inherit. What if you could do something with your life instead of organizing charity functions and attending fancy parties?” The point is, Roxy had been prepared for a lot of dark and grim things done in the line of duty to make the world a better place. She’s thought long and hard about it and made her peace.  

What Roxy had not thought to prepare herself for, however, was her co-worker and the best friend she’s ever had wanting to vividly imagine her boss’s sexual prowess.

Roxy is all for supporting Eggsy’s romantic (and sexual) life. God knows, after the life he’s had, he deserves some happiness. And honestly, after Eggsy essentially knocked on death’s door to let her open her parachute first when they were hurtling towards the ground, screaming and hanging onto each other, Roxy knows she would do almost anything for Eggsy.

Which is why she had gritted her teeth and endured the first time Eggsy, a little flushed and a lot tipsy, had leaned toward her across the table at their local and asked with a note of wistfulness in his voice, “Do you think Harry is a mean fuck?”

Roxy had (rather masterfully) not spit out her beer and had settled for giving Eggsy some serious side eye.

“I’ve never thought about it.” Roxy had said dryly.

Eggsy had stared forlornly down into his beer. “God, it’s just, his hands, you know?”  
  
(“No, not really.” Roxy had muttered into her own beer but by that point Eggsy had been lost been in his own world, a world which probably involved Harry tying him up and calling Harry Daddy. Roxy wants Eggsy to have a fulfilling and happy sexual life, she just doesn’t necessarily want to know all the details. Especially when the details include the man who stares at her with one eye from across their definitely not-round-table and one time drolly suggested over her comm that if she was having a hard time attracting the mark’s attention, might she consider pretending to be a very high class escort. He would be happy to have Merlin stand in as essentially her pimp.)

Now, five minutes away from the tailor shop and fifteen minutes away from her cozy apartment in Kensington, Roxy goes through her list of forty-seven ways she could get Eggsy to shut up from talking about how he imagines Harry would finger a young, chavvy lad with a heart of gold. Purely hypothetical, of course.  

Roxy wants to be the kind of best friend that Eggsy deserves, but god, she needs a break. She can never look into Harry’s one good eye again without imagining if he could take some young thing apart through rimming alone with those lips.

“Eggsy,” she interrupts, “not that Merlin and I don’t enjoy these discussions, but when are you going to actually make a move on Harry?”

Over the speakers discreetly located in the ceiling of the car, Merlin’s voice cackles “Galahad, if I have to continue to listen to your fantasies of my best friend, I will show him the hours of recording I have collected of you making an utter fool of yourself by prattling on and on about his his hair alone.”

“Nah guv, you wouldn’t do that.” Eggsy drawls, looking up at where he knows Merlin’s camera is. “On account of how I’m your favorite.”  
  
Roxy has the sort of upbringing that means she doesn’t snort out loud but she’s gotten pretty good at conveying her feelings through judgmental eyebrows.

Ignoring Merlin for the moment, Eggsy turns back to Roxy and gives her the cow eyes. They’re the same eyes he gives her whenever Roxy tries to gently bring up Eggsy manning up and bringing honor to his family and making a move on Harry instead of fantasizing about him to Roxy all the damn time.

At this point, Roxy is 100% immune to the cow eyes. To prove this, she gives Eggsy her best unimpressed look.

Huffing, he leans back in his seat, looking again up at the ceiling to Merlin’s camera. Merlin’s not quite as immune to the cow eyes as Roxy is, but luckily Eggsy hasn’t cottoned on to it yet. Despite his gruff demeanor and sarcastic commentary, Merlin’s a much bigger softy than Roxy could have imagined when she first met him and thought he had allowed Amelia to drown.

When she had confronted him on it, he had even looked a little guilty as he had grumbled “limits must be tested.”

And looking back, Roxy _understands_ the necessity of making the candidates think that death was real and possible at any moment. He hadn’t done anything as juvenile as shift on his feet, but Roxy has a read on Merlin now and that had definitely been resignation he felt. He made her float up to the edge of the atmosphere - he deserves to feel a little bad. Even if they had saved the world.

Roxy refuses to examine her desire to bait Merlin, to push against his emotions and see just why he got that slight hang-dog expression when she tells him how she had mourned quietly for Amelia, how she had carried the guilt around like a festering wound, not letting it impact her candidacy but never forgetting. She refuses to examine the pride she knows is also in Merlin’s eyes that she so understood the purpose of that test and that it’s not something she’ll ever be able to forget in the future - that it will always make her a better agent. She won’t forget the price of human life and that it is both a necessity and a heavy burden.

\----

The next day, Roxy bursts into Merlin’s tech cave. “We need to do something about Eggsy’s giant crush on Harry or Kingsman is going to be down one agent, and I know you don’t have time to run another candidacy trial,” she blurts.

Merlin looks up from where he’s doing something mysterious with tweezers, hallucinatory gas, and a tie pin. He looks tired and worn, but they all do following V-Day. They’re all doing three or four people’s jobs, essentially, but Roxy doesn’t let herself dwell on that too long or she’ll start screaming in rage.

“Already ahead of you lass,” Merlin says, and with a few strokes of the keyboard in front of him, the screens around her light up.

Looking at the schematics in front of her, Roxy turns to Merlin, “You’re the  magician,” she tells him earnestly.

She ignores the clenching in her stomach at Merlin’s pleased look. Eggsy already has the market cornered on making a fool of himself about one of their bosses; Roxy does not have time for that shit in her own personal life.

Roxy can’t wait to cheerfully, gleefully, and with much enjoyment read Eggsy’s increasingly panicked text messages out loud for Merlin to also savor.

\----

Which is how Harry and Eggsy end up on a mission together on a nude beach in France. In character.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also on tumblr: http://becketz.tumblr.com/


End file.
